Tag Archives: Middle School Choice

Bibi Mohamed does not want to send her youngest child to I.S. 109 in Queens Village.

Mohamed is a PTA member of P.S. 135, which her son currently attends, and is leery of the middle school, because she has heard negative rumors about it from fellow parents, as well as her older son, a current seventh grader there.

However, because of district rules she doesn’t have much of a choice.

I.S. 109 is in District 29, a zoned school area — which, like many districts around the city, only allows parents to send their children to public middle schools that are the closest in proximity to their home addresses.

“Unless they give us choice we are basically stuck on where they have to go,” Mohamed said.

Zoned districts stand in stark contrast to “choice” districts that allows parents to send their kids to any school within the region.

Recent talks within Community District Education Council (CDEC) 29 and results of an online survey could give Mohamed’s child more options.

The questionnaire from CDEC 29 showed that 94.3 percent of parents would like the choice to send their kids to another school aside from their zoned institutions.

The option to change a district over to “choice” is solely within the CDEC’s power and the Department of Education (DOE) complies with what the representatives want.

“Middle school choice is a community-based decision, and we would not implement it without the support of a district parent council and the broader community,” said David Pena, a representative of the DOE. “Currently, there is no proposed plan to make District 29 a full choice district for middle school.”

After parents like Mohamed started contacting the CDEC, the Council started discussing a change and decided to conduct the survey to research opinions within the district.

Currently, the organization has no plans to alter the district, because it is still collecting data and weighing the pros and cons.

“The positives are parents will have a choice in which middle schools their child attends. [But] the negatives are schools may have to market their programs and progress records to the parents,” said Alicia Hyndman, president of CDEC 29. “I do not have a set opinion at this time, as I am still talking with parents and community members.”

The Council isn’t set to vote on the middle school choice at their upcoming open meeting on June 21, but some parents are hoping the members act quickly.

“I think that it [the survey] should be taken as a litmus test that a lot of our schools need help,” Nathaniel Hyland, a P.S. 135 parent, said. “It should show that parents are not comfortable with schools in their district. We are the ones that live here; we are the ones that see what’s going on.”

Like Mohamed’s son, Hyland’s twin third graders will have to enroll in I.S. 109 after graduating from P.S. 135.

“I just want my children to be comfortable,” Hyland said, adding “The reason why I think that we should choose is because parents should have the ability to give their children what they perceive to be the best shot at a better education, without distractions.”

A unanimous vote overwhelmingly turned down one city proposal that would switch up the middle school enrollment process within District 27.

Following a 7-0 vote, board members of the district’s Community Education Council (CEC) defeated the city Department of Education’s (DOE) “Middle School Choice” plan, which would have allowed students to apply to attend almost any middle school in the district.

“From the very beginning, ‘Middle School Choice’ was a severely misguided attempt to address the issue of middle school enrollment in District 27, which would have resulted in a very confusing process that parents clearly did not understand or want,” said Councilmember Eric Ulrich, a staunch advocate throughout the proposal’s community input phase.

DOE and District 27 CEC officials had discussed the possibility of implementing “Middle School Choice” for the district, which includes Howard Beach, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, Broad Channel, Belle Harbor, Rockaway Park, Far Rockaway and parts of Jamaica, back in October 2011.

Under the plan, students would be eligible to attend better schools outside of their zoned residential areas, and DOE officials said the program would provide students and parents with more educational options.

While the ‘Choice’ proposal stated that zoned students would still have first priority for admission to their zoned middle schools, it had garnered much opposition throughout the affected southern Queens communities — especially from parents who were worried their children would lose seats in their zoned schools.

“I want to thank the CEC members for casting their votes according to the will of the parents they represent. They showed tremendous courage in standing up to the DOE bureaucrats who sought to impose this mandate on our district,” Ulrich said.